At the current rate of horrible fiery deaths, FuelArc projects the Cybertruck will have 14.52 fatalities per 100,000 units — far eclipsing the Pinto’s 0.85. (In absolute terms, FuelArc found, 27 Pinto drivers died in fires, while five Cybertruck drivers have suffered the same fate, at least so far.)
The Pinto got well known for a couple of reasons.
One, the classic “exploding in a rear end collision.” The design flaw here was that in certain rear collisions, the fuel tank would be pushed into the rear differential. Not only could this rupture the fuel tank, it could also produce a spark. Boom. Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.
Two, the infamous Pinto Memo, which did a cost benefit analysis that determined it would be cheaper for Ford to not fix the problem, and just settle whatever cases came up. This very clearly inspired the Fight Club recall formula scene. Take note that the car used in that scene is a Lincoln Town Car, produced by Ford Motor Company.
The kicker for the Pinto recall? What they did to fix it:
- Two sheets of 1/8" plastic, each about 18" square
- Some long zip ties
- Layer the two sheets over the rear diff, zip tie them to the axle
That’s it. My dad pointed this out to me in his shop some time in the late 80s or early 90s. He had a Pinto in for an oil change or something, “Hey, let me show you this.” It was such a hacky “repair.”
Hackey, but I guess some plastic would be enough to stop metal on metal contact and prevent sparks?
Not that my Miata “temporarily” has cardboard wrapped in tape wrapped around the cold air intake pipe to prevent it from rubbing against the frame. Nope, definitely not.
My challenger’s whole plastic front end is connected with zip ties at this point. Those pathetic plastic clips they use just break apart if you try to work on them. I realize my solution to preventing plastic dragging on the road is less important than preventing metal on metal contact though.
Curious: how effective was that “repair”? Did it actually make a difference at all?
It would have prevented the “spark” part of the failure condition, but not the tank rupturing part.
The bolts on the back of the diff would puncture the fuel tank, so it would help with both.
That’s not how Pinto axles were. The differential assembly bolts in from the front.
Stopping the explosions seems like a good enough sort of solution to me
Leaking fuel is generally a bad thing. It may not hit the differential but let’s say the exhaust or muffler is banged up and pointed downwards – still gonna have a nasty fire
Nasty fire still sounds better than instant explosion! Haha
A more appropriate solution would be a plastic shield designed to fit around the whole front of the gas tank, and then appropriately fixed to the vehicle, as opposed to “some hardware store shit.”
Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.
Jeep Grand Cherokees were this way between 1993 and 2004 and Jeep Libertys were this way between 2002 and 2007.
I do believe they were plastic though.
But they are jeeps. Quality was never an expectation
I love my Jeep. Why make it unbreakable, when you can make it easy to fix!
Was the Pinto really that bad, though, or did Mother Jones do them dirty?
In the numbers above, the Pinto is hardly a standout deathtrap; I mean, by modern standards, sure, everything on that list is a horrible deathtrap, but the Pinto was safer than the Toyota Corolla or the Beetle or the Datsun 210, and none of those cars are as burdened with the oppressive fiery deathtrap narrative as the Pinto is. In fact, the Pinto’s overall deaths per million vehicles is better than the average!
https://www.theautopian.com/its-long-past-time-to-stop-making-fun-of-the-ford-pinto/
And some people wonder why the cybertruck is barely sold outside the US.
Everything I hear about this thing is bad.
It’s barely sold outside the US because other places (like the EU) also care about the safety of people outside the vehicle. That’s why European and Asian cars (except the models explicitly for the US market like the Tacoma) are designed for pedestrians to be deflected, while US cars are a moving brick wall which will squish them like a bug.
Also, I suspect you’d need commercial plates and a special license to drive it most other places, due to the weight.
Do you have a reasonable alternative solution to teach pedestrians lessons?
Edit: (/s)
Pedestrians would probably learn more from the experience if they don’t die.
(sorry dropped /s)
It’s barely sold in the US as well.
Might have something to do with it looking fucking stupid.
Most US trucks look fucking stupid. In my honest opinion.
I have no problem with something looking stupid. The problem for me is not just that it looks stupid, but that it is stupid. It’s a stupid thing that shouldn’t exist.
It’s only available in North America / Mexico. It won’t fly with many vehicle regulations outside of the US.
I imagine the sharp edges are more than enough to keep it out of Europe forever. Pedestrians need to be able to roll onto a vehicle in an EU pedestrian collision. The Cybertruck will lop you in half.
keep in mind that while the cybertruck might seem like a bad vehicle, it also is a bad vehicle
HUSH!!! DO NOT TELL THE CUCKWAGON OWNERS!!
I was thinking “What’s that red stu—oh…” Yikes.
Melted plastic… right? Yup imma say it’s melted platic
But it is so financially efficient! It isn’t wasting money on safety.
I was driving out of a parking lot yesterday just as a Cybertruck started to pull in off the street from the left. The driver was white-knuckling the wheel and was frantically looking around as I assume he could barely see out of the goddamn thing as he swung so wide he nearly clipped my car. He needed almost the entire driveway to make his turn.
I cannot imagine dropping so much money on something so useless and so hideous.
well i hate to say this (really i do), turning is actually one of the only strong points about the CT. It can do a u-turn in the same-ish radius as a model 3, much better than most vehicles in its class.
that driver was just a fucking moron
that driver was just a fucking moron
I mean, he bought a cybertruck lol
I love Elon Bad posts, but I think it’s worthwhile to examine why Elon bad in this case.
Like many reactionaries, Elon’s business philosophy is pure tech-bro-libertarianism. And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap), in order to create the safe space that industrialists need to
extract, er create.He’s literally said things like (paraphrasing)
When I see a specification for three bolts I ask: why can’t we do it with two?
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
Also, normally the cost savings should go to the client, not into some billionaires bank account.
He is like a child who is still rebelling against his parents who made him go to bed early too many times.
You can’t use “literally” and “paraphrasing” like that.
You can’t use “literally” and
… be over 14
That’s literally not true.
Thank you, my pedantic friend. (I say this because I’m often the one making the comment and getting the eyerolls)
Normally I don’t point it out. But this one was just too much.
You just literally said (interpretive paraphrasing), “I like big butts and I cannot lie”
You’re/they’re just paraphrasing Chaucer
oh god that quote. he’s so lame and fucking stupid.
I’m sure corner cutting is a concern but also he’s so insecure he probably read things about Steve Jobs or something, and tried to ape him. I remember something about Jobs supposedly telling employees to reduce steps in some processes or whatever. this idiot doesn’t understand anything so he thinks asking for fewer bolts is the same thing.
why can’t we do it in two? cause that’s how you secure things you fucking dumbass. your proud fascination for “fewer bolts” is why your hypercuck tried to kill a driver.
is pure tech-bro-libertarianism
Tech bros are usually not libertarian. Being excited about a failed solution to only one of libertarian problems (blockchain) doesn’t make one libertarian, too.
And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap)
That’s not libertarianism, more like Ayn Rand and her inverse bolshevism with good mighty benevolent industrial aristocracy and bad stupid mischievous everyone else. She even reads like one of Valentin Pikul’s “historical novels”, only with inverted good and bad guys. That ideology is radically different from libertarianism, instead of freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression and such, resulting in a free society with free contracts, Ayn Rand says that some people are better than the others and thus freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression etc are measures by relative value of the offender and the victim. It’s jungle law.
Anyway, it’s not “neoliberal” either, anti-monopoly regulations are part of the “ideal” free market model. And I think Elon likes patents and trademarks, which are not necessarily there (and in libertarianism are not a thing).
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
You might have seen the recent news about Tesla sales falling. Maybe it took so long because of accumulated trust into regulators not allowing car makers to make dangerous crap. So - then maybe in other reality, where Elon came to an industry already allowed to cut corners, he’d go bankrupt by now because of consumers understanding who he is.
Life is complex, I’m not saying he’s right, just that.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
The way software industry works, a lot of people have died due to its failures. One has to count people who’ve committed suicide due to events cause by some bug or even UX problem, people who failed to communicate something in time, thus possibly saving someone, people who disclosed what they shouldn’t have, thus possibly causing a criminal death, medical errors due to software problems, wars, catastrophes.
But yes, it’s already allowed to do that and Elon wants such wonders in other industries, so that we’d have a bit of natural selection in our daily lives. Dystopian cyberpunk is called dystopian because it’s not utopian, but being a billionaire, I guess, one would dream of living in such instead of utopian version of boring past.
An MVP should not be a beta version, but fully functional and bug-free. The idea is to reduce scope to not necessarily even release it (though that’s possible) but to have a solid foundation onto which to duct-tape bells and whistles.
The MVP of a car doesn’t have heated seats, heck the seats might not even be adjustable without a wrench, but it’s absolutely going to drive and drive well and be crash-safe. Because if it doesn’t it’s nowhere close to being a viable car, go back and fix that before spending time on those seats.
I think it’s also worth noting that Elon Musk is a scammer. Every other word out of his mouth is likely a lie. He’s been claiming to already have technologies available for his Tesla cars, his SpaceX rockets, etc, all ready to go and… it never happened. Tesla full self driving? The Tesla taxis? SpaceX on Mars? The Tesla laughably stupid robots? Even those were faked.
Claims after claims for decades and literally no results
The guy is a full on bait and switch yet everyone seems to lap up everything this scammer says.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a simplification mindset. Automotive manufacturers certainly do like to overcomplicate things. Unfortunately people like him only care about costs and not quality.
Him and his libertarian friends fuck up left and right. Crashing startups and just getting more money for another. Constant recalls. Blowing up rockets until it works.
Yet they hold the government to a standard of being perfect and high performing with no room for failure. NASA can’t be blowing up rockets. As soon as they do the world comes down on them.
And Trump is the biggest fuckup of all these guys.
I see you don’t understand testing things before they are safe for humans to be inside of. So by this logic, you are saying “blowing up rockets until it works” is also saying “crash testing cars is stupid.”
<blank stare>
If NASA was funded properly, we may not be leaning on one private company, whose owner is a nazi, to be paving our way forward for daily space activities. Can’t say things won’t blow up during testing, but at least it won’t be headed by that guy.
The issue isn’t the way of testing, but the two standards. If Musk blows up rockets in testing it’s a genius move with rapid iteration. If NASA does this it’s irresponsible handling of tax payer’s money on risky endeavors.
I stand by my comment. Things break, shit happens, this is why we test them.
Blowing up rockets until it works is a far better approach than trying to get everything to work on the first try and ending up with a hugely overpriced white elephant.
Sure, if it was cheaper than just doing it correctly the first time which it’s not
How do you do something “correctly” when nobody knows what that is? If your main priority is to do it “correctly” you will never develop anything fundamentally new.
Okay so say your testing a brand new rocket engine idea. It uses a fuel nobody has tried to use before. So what you do is you figure out how much energy this fuel has and do some math to figure out how much you’ll need to take with you for the typical rocket. You design an engine for this spec or better and thoroughly test it to make sure it’s behaving like expected. You eventually mount it to a rocket and make sure in practice it behaves as you expect. Next you put a payload in the rocket and test it again. If at any point things don’t behave as expected you have to fix your whole model.
SpaceX struggles to go a launch without their engines destroying themselves. Perhaps they should go back a few steps?
A rocket is not fundamentally new and hasn’t been for almost 100 years.
Rockets perform correctly when they deliver their payload to the correct orbit.
You can calculate the energy density of fuels, the efficiency of your engines at various atmospheric pressures, and determine the payload size you can deliver with your engines and fuel. Blowing up rockets for “tests” is so 1950s. We have whole college programs on rocket design. We have desktop computers more powerful than anything available in the 1960s, and NASA managed to design the Saturn V, a rocket of similar size to starship, with the computers of the time and fucking slide rules. The Saturn V had its problem, but each rocket managed to deliver its payload and perform its part of the mission without blowing up.
Your comment is classic tech bro. No understanding of real engineering principles and only a desire to shove some shit out of the door as fast as possible.
You are 100% correct about modeling being more advanced. It proves just how stupid Musk is. Musk at one point asked for the code that twitter uses to be printed on paper… on fucking paper! Like what the hell is this? The 1970s? I wrote code in the 90s and I never heard of anyone printing out raw code before him.
There are two American rocket projects in the works that can carry a significant payload to the moon. One is using existing parts in a new configuration. It had one successful launch and cost $4B ($2.5B in launch costs alone). One is building a largely new system and improving existing elements and is estimated to have cost less than $2B so far, although it hasn’t reached the moon yet. That said, they have done 7 tests, at least 3 with a full configuration. How is that not better than the other option?
Also, you are acting like there are no fundamental advances happening in space engineering. Sure, the physics is pretty well-known, but the engineering problem of landing and reusing stages/rockets commercially has only been done since the Falcon series, so I think it’s safe to assume the technology and associated product lines is still maturing.
It seems obvious in hindsight. Sheet metal doors will crumple in a way that can’t be opened, trapping occupants. The fire doesn’t need to start in the relatively safe and armored battery system. It could be pinched wiring causing a short that ignites plastic interiors, or a fire from another vehicle spreading to the cybertruck.
I’m sure someone mentioned all this to them during design.
Plus there’s the electronic opening mechanisms that fail in the event of a fire. This is on most Teslas iirc. Even if the doors are intact, you’re stuck.
There’s ways to open them, but good luck with this shit when you’re concussed from an accident, and sat in a burning vehicle.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
Why are we talkaing about this? Who needs this sheet?
But at least its bulletproof!
To bb guns
The pinto is a myth
Pintos represented 1.9% of all cars on the road in the 1975–76 period. During that time, the car represented 1.9% of all “fatal accidents accompanied by some fire”. This implies the Pinto was average for all cars and slightly above average for its class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safety_analysisReads like clickbait. There’s 34K Cybetrucks, so the actual number of fire fatalities is rounded to 5, one of which is the trumptower guy (so 20% is already intentional). Not that these are encouraging numbers, but you can’t draw conclusions from an N of 4.
You can draw conclusions because there’s only 35,000 on the road. That is a terrible rate.
that’s how confirmation bias works, not statistical probabilities.
EM’s still a nazi and the CT is a horrible joke, but this is still insufficient data.
Are you telling me that 35,000 vehicles is not a sufficient sample size to assess safety? Are you for real?
No. Incidence is a measure of probability of events over time (or with cars alternatively over miles). If the number of events is low (and 4 is low), your confidence intervals are extremely wide (which is the statistical way to say, we have no idea what the real number may be). The comparison is striking, the pinto had 27 fires over 9 years in >3M vehicles. https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-explosive-than-the-ford-pinto/
Let’s add that idiots buy cybertrucks who disproportionately think it’s bulletproof…
Again, “analyses” like this make great clickbait but contribute very little to our understanding, and that will remain the case even regardless of you getting angry at me about it or not.
It’s so great to be able to find comments such as yours, unfortunately it feels uncommon in Lemmy specially when certain names are mentioned, the bias and willfulness to shit on those are making people a bit blindsided and easy to guide through bad data usage. My first thought reading the title was about the statistical value of the numbers given, which doesn’t detract from the actual quality or lack thereof of the vehicle. At the moment using elon musk or tesla in a title of an article will increase the traffic automatically. Which is why we constantly get every single shitty comment made by him reported with useless data.
Yeah it’s part of the enshitification process. This is why Lemmy appears superior to reddit thus far. On reddit, the quintessential early “are you stupid?” response is enough to shut down the conversation. I’m glad it didn’t happen here.
And it’s not even that I disagree that Teslas have major safety design faults, you cannot put door opening mechanism on an electric actuator, because you’ll get trapped. I’d never buy a car that doesn’t have a mechanical door latch at hand (it’s hidden on teslas). Interestingly Teslas used to be considered one of the safest vehicles, but I think a lot of it is, the early EV adopter demographic is simply characterized by much safer driving, and as this demographic shifted, more and more reckless drivers obtained Teslas. (I’ve been driving EVs since 2017 and around 2022 the demographic shift, at least for Teslas, became very obvious)
And the answer is"What is the Poisson Distribution" Alex.
There is literally a distribution that describes the occurences of low probability events in large populations. It was developed to study deaths by horse kick in the Prussian army. So confidence intervals never come into it. You’re applying Stats for Communications Majors reasoning to an adult problem.
Well, the problem is, even if I take the single case where this one guy exploded himself with his truck and compare it to the Pinto data, the poisson distribution difference will probably be statistically significant, yet the measure would be absolutely useless from a real-world perspective, because it has nothing to do with the vehicle’s design.
I’d also argue that many of these events might not even be entirely occurring independently from each other (i.e., some of the key assumptions of Poisson are incorrect here) when people do all sorts of stupid shit with these rolling garbage cans like shooting at them, submerging them, etc. in a meme-like fashion for Tiktok views. So 4 events might very well be influenced by non-design-based, non-random human factors, which applied to other vehicles could generate similar results, and if the analysis were serious, they would have individually reviewed how these whopping 4 events happened, accounted for reporting bias towards EV fires (especially Tesla) and compared it to the F150 or the Ford Lightning as an analogous vehicle.
And I know the internet tends to conflate condescension with competence, but seriously, you should understand the above-listed things as a stats teacher.
edits for clarity
edit 2: also, in the times of the prussian army they did not have to account for stuff like people suddenly starting to pull the horses’ tails for social media views.
Can we like, mark this as NSFW?
No. Shit. Sherlock.
